The emergency demolition of seven vacant Lexington Avenue buildings Monday was the largest mass tear-down in the city since fire gutted a section of Sheridan Hollow nearly a year ago.

Amid the roar of collapsing 19th-century timber and brick, a stone's throw from the headquarters of the city's leading preservation group, all but one of the buildings on the block between Sheridan Avenue and Orange Street vanished.

The scene was a study in the contrasts that complicate the city's vacant building problem. Preservationists howled that the buildings, while far from being in good shape, did not warrant the city wielding its power to order them razed in the name of public safety. But neighbors — who viewed them warily as beacons for squatters, "critters" and arsonists — dismissed them as eyesores with a wave of good riddance.

"I'm so glad they're taking those raggedy buildings down," declared Robert Brown, 55, the owner of All My Children Barber and Beauty Shop across the street, almost beaming. "Then you don't have to worry about nobody setting fires."

Fires haven't been Brown's problem since he opened his business three years ago. It's been burglaries, including one in which he said thieves busted their way into the back of his building through a wall facing a narrow alley sheltered by yet another vacant building on Orange Street, making off with his television and some barber equipment.

He now employs an array of cameras, an alarm system and a no-nonsense looking German shepherd named Rocky as a deterrent.

The city ordered the buildings — 56, 58, 60, 62, 64, 66 and 68 Lexington — razed after an engineer deemed them an imminent threat to public safety Monday morning, said Jeffery Jamison, commissioner of buildings and regulatory compliance.

Three are owned by Albany Community Action Partnership, a nonprofit social services agency headquartered around the corner, which had hoped to demolish them eventually to make way for a new Head Start program and day care facility. One was owned by Albany County, and three others were privately owned, according to city records.

"They were an imminent hazard to the health and public safety of our citizens and visitors," Jamison said, "and we took the appropriate action to remove the hazard."

But Historic Albany's executive director, Susan Holland, said she believes as many as six of the buildings could have been saved and called the city's use of its emergency demolition authority — which bypasses oversight by the city Planning Board — "an abuse of power."

Jamison said no decision was made to raze the buildings until Monday, but others noted that utilities to at least some of them were cut last week — often a precursor to demolition.

Michael Guidice, a Historic Albany board member, said losing an entire block at once is a symptom of the city's broken system of managing its more than 800 vacant buildings.

"This is failure," Guidice said. "This isn't a solution."

Assuming it can acquire the rest of the soon-to-be-cleared land on the block, ACAP's plan for a Head Start program is likely at least five years off, Executive Director Kathleen Courtier said.

"It's got to be something productive. We don't need another corner store," said resident Terry Moore, 43, a former Marine Corps corporal who recently returned to the neighborhood. Otherwise, Moore said, "All it does is leave another hole in the community."